


When everybody loves you

by aphrodite_mine



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waxing nostalgic and impressed about gloss's fic "When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely"</p>
            </blockquote>





	When everybody loves you

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045210) by [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss). 



> Cross-posted from my blog, [the dream doesn't rescue the maiden](http://rescuethemaiden.wordpress.com/2014/02/06/fandom-faves-part-one-when-everybody-loves-you/).

I started watching season 9 of _The Office_ after about a year-and-a-half hiatus from the show. I'd hit a point where the things that bugged me about the show (Jim, Andy, possessive heterosexual relationships) overshadowed the things I loved (Pam). But with more restructuring and shifting the balances of screentime, season 9 appeared to be safe to try again. Not to mention, gloss's effulgent reviews of things the show was doing -- the quiet moments of victory, of Pam's arc, of the show actually allowing us to see Jim's asshattery without calling it something else -- building up to the 4th-wall breaking in "Customer Loyalty." What Greg Daniels and many viewers of the series considered a plot point in the Jim/Pam relationship rainbow was to gloss and I and several other lonely viewers a light at the end of the long tunnel.

I'll still dream of another universe where Pam draws a line in the sand and Jim is stupid enough to stay on the other side of it. Where Pam is celebrated -- and celebrates herself -- for the things she does. Where she walks on hot coals and not only do we notice, but we applaud.

So, while the back half of the season was disappointing in many ways, I'll still love season 9 for the glimpse it gave of Pam-without-Jim. Perhaps they never ventured to think of how much that glimpse would mean, and how much we wanted to see more.

For me, gloss's [When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1045210/chapters/2089919) encompasses everything about this feeling. The story takes place during "Dwight's Christmas" -- just prior to the breaking point Brian interferes in during "Customer Loyalty." We've seen Pam on her own more than with Jim so far, and while it is heartbreaking to see her suffer -- mostly silently -- for Jim's dream, there's a thread of hope that something better waits on the other side.

The story opens as the last dredges of Dwight's Christmas party have ended. Pam is drunk. Has she outdrunk Meredith? Possibly, but no one can account for what Meredith's been drinking since 8 that morning. So, in that case... probably not. Drunk!Pam is enthusiastic in her holiday salutations even when contrasted with the defeated and deflated Dwight who, in absent-Jim's place, is giving Pam a ride home. Despite Pam's best efforts, she isn't successful with cheering him up or awkwardly inviting him in (oh, Pam. Pam. She is that lonely. "She's not coming on to Dwight, is she?")

I have a lot of feelings about this fic, which is probably needless to say. They begin to kick in to gear at "Not sexy-hot. Flushed, kind of nauseous hot." Pam makes the shaky, drunk connection that Jim has persued this business in Philly because of her, because of something she lacks. This line hurts so much because I imagine it is something Jim would quickly deny, but there is a sticky truth to it, even if Pam's reasoning doesn't quite make the leap. Jim is in Philly not because of something she lacks, but because she, them, the life they've built together around a terrible paper company suddenly aren't enough for Jim. I'm not saying that all couples who make a decision like Jim's aren't framed in love or a destined for failure. No, the problem here is that Pam has to guess why Jim is in Philly. There has been a rift between them long before Philly -- the distance only illustrates it, makes it harder to ignore.

In any case, Jim is still in Philly and Pam makes a run for it, pausing briefly to evaluate her success as a mother by the unfinished wreath hanging on the front door. The facts that 1) Pam purposefully set out to create mother-daughter crafting traditions and 2) HUNG UP THE UNFINISHED WREATH are basically why I love her, in a nutshell. I get the feeling that Pam is just not made for the world she lives in (most of us aren't, I guess). It's this world where parenting is judged by things like complete wreaths and not happy children. A world that sets mothers up for failure.

It's cold outside. "Her breath comes in great big white clouds, like speech balloons in comic books. She can't read these, though. She has no idea what she might be saying." This line, though. This connects to Pam's art, and to how utterly lost she now finds herself. Of course, this is exacerbated by alcohol, but Pam, now, is a wife without a husband; a mother who has "failed" her children; an employee who recognizes the faults of her peers and finds herself among them.

She is, as she so painfully feels, alone.

The solution to being alone, of course, is finding some way to fill the emptiness. That answer, for Pam is "Tunes, tuneage, banana-fanna-fo-funeage. Tuneage." I love this. Out of context, it reads like something out of _I Love You, Man_ , but then you pause and picture Pam, half-stripped, drunk off her ass, and confusedly looking at her computer... and the sadness hits hard. This is what I'm talking about, or trying to talk about. This sort of juxtaposition, intentional or not, between the hilarious and the desperate are what work most on the show, and what gloss does here effortlessly. So effortlessly that we find ourselves tearing up over the fact that Pam doesn't have a robot house. In fact, there is mold in the basement because even the idea of what Pam's parents should be has betrayed her.

And she can't even listen to tunes properly, of course, because the stereo is Jim's and she doesn't know how to work it. "Shouldn't it be theirs? Hers?" This idea is presented so seemlessly that it feels like canon. It begs the question: what else in Pam's life doesn't belong to her? Considering it, I think that art is the only thing that Pam owns that didn't first belong to Jim. At some point, maybe season six?, Pam really starts to own her job. And here, now, with Pam in a bra and sweatpants and covered in snot, we see Pam try to take some pathetic? earnest? ownership into her relationships.

Karen's introduction to the story comes unexpectedly -- for Pam and for us. The moment when Pam discovers Karen's Christmas postcard on the table feels familiar: that unexpected run-in with an ex or an old best friend that shouldn't hurt because they don't mean anything anymore, or never did, but that doesn't explain why it hurts so much and makes us yearn so hard for something that might have been, or was, or maybe even might be.

Then, the drunk Facebook chat. Assuming that we read this sober, the exchange cuts like a knife. We've been Pam, probably, and remember being past the point of caring, past the point of reading between the lines and the silences because we just want to reach out and end up grabbing anything. Karen is cautious, but friendly. Scranton, it seems, is unique in living in the past. She has no reason to hold a grudge against Pam -- after all, they got along. Jim wasn't right for either of them, but he ended up with Pam. Karen got a new job and a baby out of the incident, and is arguably better off. (Though, I'm sure Karen has had a drunk-underwear-snot night or two. She probably spent it yelling at tweens in _Call of Duty: Ghosts_.) Which is worse, Pam wonders, watching someone lose interest and drift away (JIM) or the void of silence (Karen, she presumes)? Without connecting these concepts to people, Pam still chooses Karen and fumbles towards a frantic rekindling of... something. As readers, we don't know the full extent of what happened during that Christmas party years ago. But we know enough.

A kiss. More than passing affection.

Right when, even drunk, Pam might puncture Karen's carefully distant demeanor, she gives up. In thismoment with the house too bright and too hot and too lonely, she cannot risk that Karen will push away. The void is better. So, Pam pushes the computer away and waits while sobriety lurks around corners with a glass of water and the phone rings.

It could be a prank call, could be Pam's mom, could be Jim. In fact, the trajectory of Pam's life dictates that this phone call will be utterly un-lifechanging. However, the trajectory of gloss's fic makes us quiver towards _possibility_. Because this could be a door, if Pam opens it. She'll stay in her room with Jim in Philly and failed children and glitter on the lineoleum with Karen -- with change -- on the other side of the door and never move. But this could be Karen knocking.

"When everybody loves you" has the balls to take a step, to move beyond the show and works like [How to Wake Up Feeling Totally Alert](http://archiveofourown.org/works/284248) (maidenjedi), [Blankly as Walls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/319471) (Kyra), and my own [A Lack of Color](http://archiveofourown.org/works/421180) by not simply letting Jim exist in the background, silent but blameless. gloss fearlessly convinces us that Jim isn't just part of the problem. He is the problem. He represents the problem. The solution won't be easy -- we don't get a happy ending here -- but everything about Pam is slow and deliberate. "She should answer it." But she won't. Pam will wake up, hungover. She'll get dressed, eat a miserable breakfast.

She'll check her messages and breathe.


End file.
